With the exponential growth in available channels and the race to craft successful campaigns gaining momentum, marketing teams need to create a greater variety of marketing collaterals to stay ahead. Marketing and sales collaterals with interactive content provide unparalleled engagement with a wide range of prospective clients and play a crucial role in fostering a relationship between them and your brand.
When creating or reworking a marketing strategy for your business, irrespective of its size, selecting the most effective form from the broad range of marketing collateral can get overwhelming quickly. Although businesses relied heavily on printed marketing materials in the past, these traditional methods are no longer the only option.
The Internet offers a plethora of opportunities for businesses to connect, promote, and build brand relationships with their customer base through marketing collateral such as e-magazines, white papers, blog posts, digital annual reports, and more.
Making the right choice of marketing collateral and applying them effectively to your campaigns can go a long way in determining the success of your brand!
How Marketing Collateral Serve As Essential Marketing Tools
Marketing collateral serves different purposes for different audience segments, but collectively, it is mainly significant for marketing and sales. Marketing material with interactive content may be used to create awareness of your brand if your audience is looking for an optimal solution for their challenges.
Suppose they know about your brand but are still deciding whether your product or service is worth investing. In that case, you can create collateral to convert them into qualified leads.
In yesteryears, interactive content materials were relevant mainly to sales, marketing, and other customer-facing teams. But, in present times, branding is crucial in every aspect of a company, and so are the marketing materials that support it. For instance, human resources departments are utilizing brand collateral for recruitment and better employee engagement.
Depending on the marketing objective and stage of marketing, there are different types of marketing collateral, such as
Pre-Purchase Sales & Marketing Collateral
- Business Listings & Directories
- Brochures and flyers
- Product Vs. Product Content
- Brand Magazines
- Product Catalogs
- Research Reports
- Infographics
- Webinars
- Ebooks
Sales Process Marketing Collateral
- ROI Calculators
- Testimonials
- Case Studies
- Common Objection FAQs
- Pitch & Discovery Decks
- Product Demo Decks
- Tear & Sell Sheets / Product & Service One-Pagers
- Business Cards
Post-Purchase Marketing & Customer Success Collateral
- Welcome Kits
- Onboarding Guides
- Use Case Guides
- Newsletters
Five High-Performance Marketing Collateral
While every type of marketing collateral has a purpose and area of application, let’s look at five types of marketing collateral known to boost marketing and sales performance.
Infographics
Infographics are a marketing collateral type that can be used across the buyer’s journey but are more common at the awareness stage. As a visual representation of crucial product or service data, infographics are mainly used to simplify complex information, making it easy to understand for prospects.
Did You Know?
Infographics are the most accepted visual content, bringing 40% of brand user engagement.
Infographics can be used across various marketing channels, including the company’s website, email marketing, or social media pages. This marketing collateral form may list items in a blog, represent step-by-step guides, or be included as supporting material to convey information in an easily assimilable format.
Whitepapers
While infographics are a key form of marketing content used at the awareness stage of a campaign, whitepapers are mainly used during the consideration phase as a credible source of company information. Whitepapers are usually in-depth reports that provide detailed information to establish a company’s expertise in a particular area or educate potential customers. They are often used in B2B marketing to help businesses make informed decisions about products or services.
Did You Know?
71% of B2B buyers have used white papers in the last 12 months to research purchasing decisions.
Whitepapers are distributed through various channels, such as email marketing campaigns, social media, or the company’s website. They can also be used as a lead generation tool by requiring readers to provide their contact information before downloading the whitepaper.
Case Studies
Client case studies are popular self-promotional marketing collateral providing visual and textual highlights of how a product or service solved a problem for a customer over a short period. They are typically used to demonstrate the value of a product or service to potential customers. Case studies are applicable to both B2B and B2C marketing.
Did You Know?
According to the eMarketer survey, 62.6% of respondents believe case studies effectively generate leads.
Case studies mainly focus on the customer’s challenges and how the product or service helped overcome them. These marketing collateral forms also provide insights into the comparative advantage of the process followed by a business. They are also used in sales pitches to demonstrate the product or service’s value.
Detailed case studies trace the journey of reputable customers willing to vouch for your business, adding credibility to your company’s reputation as a reliable, knowledgeable organization with a product or service that delivers results!
Videos
Videos are one of the most popular and commonly used types of marketing collateral. Videos can be used to attract potential customers by providing a visual representation of the product or service. They can also be used to educate existing customers about the benefits of a product or service.
Did You Know?
96% of Online shoppers watch the video about a service or product.
As important marketing collateral, videos provide captivating visuals of a service process or product features. Used in both B2B and B2C marketing, videos play a significant role throughout the marketing and sales process. Explainer and tutorial videos help create awareness of a product or service. Video case studies and testimonials, on the other hand, promote customer engagement and retention.
E-Books
E-books are digital books that provide in-depth information about the company’s expertise in the industry or field. Like blogs and whitepapers, E-books are informational marketing collateral that can be used to create awareness and boost brand engagement.
Did You Know?
E-books may be instructional, provide how-to guides for a product or service application, or provide significant insights into the brand and its differentiators. E-books offer multiple advantages as marketing collateral that include easy repurposing, downloadable, shareable, and cover detailed information.
Generating impactful Ebooks is a surefire way of highlighting your industry knowledge, convincing prospective clients that your product or service will deliver the promised results!
The Secret To Creating Effective Marketing Collateral
Marketing collateral is a powerful tool in a marketer’s arsenal. Designing effective marketing collateral requires considering some factors, including marketing objectives, campaign goals, distribution channels, in-depth analysis, and data collected. Marketing and sales collateral must be designed to leverage the interest areas of the target audience and consistently re-engage them with an immersive and thought-provoking experience.
There are multiple options to choose from for creating impactful marketing collateral. Although in-house creative teams can be an excellent option to explore, they also come with extra expenses on infrastructure. Outsourcing marketing collateral design and creation is a great option, especially for businesses lacking expertise and infrastructure.
Creative design outsourcing companies like Artwork Abode provide several advantages besides marketing collateral design expertise and infrastructure. While there are numerous types of marketing collateral, deciding on the right one for your business can be a crucial step in navigating your campaign’s success.
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